Category — Aeroponics

The system is modular, enabling a grower to have one or multiple devices controlled seamlessly through the SproutsIOGrow mobile app.

From their website:

The SproutsIO device is the home of your microgarden, designed to monitor and nurture your produce. The device is equipped with WiFi connectivity, environmental sensors for monitoring both plant and ambient conditions, camera, high efficiency LED lighting, and an electronic mister. The thoughtful design allows for ease of use and maintenance wherever you live, work, and play.

Edenworks, an aquaponic farm in East Williamsburg, expects to produce around 150,000 pounds of leafy greens in a 12,000-square-foot space. For reference, Brooklyn Grange, the world’s largest rooftop soil farm operating on two rooftops in Brooklyn, grows about 50,000 pounds of produce in a total of 108,000 square feet. That’s 70 percent more produce in about five percent of the space.

By Emily Payne
New York City Food Policy Centre
Nov 16, 2016

Excerpt:

The Lt. Joseph P Kennedy Community Center Garden, Harlem

Location: The Lt. Joseph P Kennedy Community Center in Harlem, which offers a range of cultural events and educational opportunities in the neighborhood, is home to this agricultural project and science lab.

Size: The rooftop currently boasts 64 square feet of deep water tanks, along with modular vertical gardens producing a number of food plants.

Lead photo caption: AeroFarms is a mission-driven company setting a new standard for controlled urban agriculture to address the global food crisis by building and operating indoor farms in cities. (Xinhua/Wang Lei)

Xinhua
Nov. 22

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) — Officials from China and United States on Tuesday hailed the two countries’ agriculture cooperation and pledged to strengthen the partnership.

Agriculture is one of the earliest, most productive and potential areas for Sino-U.S. cooperation, said Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang at the China-U.S. Agriculture and Food Seminar held during the 27th Session of the China-U.S. Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT).

“In the past 15 years since China joined the World Trade Organization, bilateral agricultural trade volume witnessed an average annual growth of 17 percent, reaching 32.1 billion US dollars last year,” said Wang.

The agricultural cooperation between China and the United States has made fruitful achievements in trade and investment, technology exchange and personnel training, and has made important contributions to the development of Sino-U.S. relationship, he said.

The Smart Garden 9 is a meticulously designed, self-growing garden that revolutionizes how fresh food is grown.

From Kickstarter site.
Nov 17, 2016

Excerpts:

From crisp kale and spicy chilli to sweet strawberry and calming mint, this self-growing garden helps all plants thrive, automatically making sure they have the right amounts of water, light, oxygen, and nutrients. With healthy foods grown right on your windowsill, you can enjoy a higher quality of life 24/7.

The presenter is Christopher Somerville, who has been working for FAO projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip since 2012.
Friday 28 October 2016
2:00 – 3:00 pm (Rome time),
FAO HQ – AGD Meeting Room (B640)

Aquaponics is a sustainable food production system that combines aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (growing soil-less plants). Both practices mutually benefit from each other’s presence in one production unit. The fish waste provides an organic food source for the growing plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water the fish live in.

Based on the successful results from our prototypes, we’re now ready to place a bulk order with the finalized Taiga Tower design after this campaign closes.

Taiga Eco Systems, Inc.
San Jose, United States
Oct 11, 2016

Excerpt from their Indiegogo site:

We’ve spent a year perfecting the design and features of the Taiga Tower. Our prototype towers have flourished and proven the value of our tower design and low-maintenance care features. Our beta testers loved the benefits of having a backyard vegetable garden all packed within a compact and easy to use tower design. Based on the successful results from our prototypes, we’re now ready to place a bulk order with the finalized Taiga Tower design after this campaign closes.

Aquaponics educational program provides a hands on learning approach and is relevant to the biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and industrial arts curriculums

Excerpts From Sea To Sky Aquaponics website:

Sea To Sky Aquaponics’ vision is to educate and empower people to grow their own food. With awareness about the benefits of sustainable agriculture increasing, people are demanding alternatives to the industrialized food system. The benefits of our systems are many.

Comcrop CEO Allan Lim at his rooftop aquaponic farm. Mr Lim is optimistic that one day, the roofs of HDB estates and multistorey carparks could house similar urban rooftop farms. Photo: Dios Vincoy Jr For The Straits Times

He has his sights set on building a full-scale farm on a 3,500 sq metre location in Woodlands, with the aim of supplying food production centres and catering companies with leafy greens.

By Cheryl Teh
Straits Times
Aug 5, 2016

Excerpt:

Crops like basil and peppermint grow abundantly from vertical racks, and are tended to by several senior citizens and volunteers.

The crops from these racks alone provide over 150kg of produce per month – enough to garnish over 20,000 plates at a restaurant for a year.

Urban Agriculture Center received a $1.5 million federal grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

By Malik Russell
Virginia Free Press
5/20/2016

Excerpt:

According to Duron Chavis, the center’s project director and a VSU graduate, the center combines hydroponics, where vegetables are grown in water rather than soil, and aquaponics, where fish are grown in small tanks, in a way that allows the fish waste to work as fertilizer for the plants, which in turn, filter the water.

“Basically, we’re trying to multiply how much food you can grow (in a small space) by two, three, four or five times, while at the same time conserving water and energy,” Mr. Chavis told the Free Press.

We are on the precipice of a global food crisis. The math is simple and staggering: we need to produce at least 50% more food to feed 9 billion people by 2050, but are currently capped by resource limitations, environmental contamination, and agricultural decline. At MIT, Caleb Harper, an architect turned urban farmer, is working to reverse the tide by revolutionizing agriculture as we know it. Link here.

Rebecca Self of FoodChain, an urban agriculture nonprofit, posed with greens being grown along with tilapia fish in an aquaponics system. The greens and fish are sold to restaurants. By Tom Eblen.

Since September 2013, FoodChain has been producing about 30 pounds of greens and a dozen tilapia each week.

By Tom Eblan
Kentucky.com
September 20, 2015

Excerpt:

The fish and most of the greens are bought by Smithtown Seafood. Blue Moon Farm distributes excess greens to other restaurants.

The aquaponics system works like this: waste grain from the brewery is fed to the fish, whose waste water provides the nutrients for lettuce and other greens to be grown under energy-efficient indoor lighting.

Their first big corporate client is the Hilton Anatole hotel, where they’re working with chef David Scalise to install a rooftop farm on September 6.

By Teresa Gubbins
Dallas Culture Map
Sept 1, 2015

Excerpt:

Dallas Urban Farms is the brainchild of Jody Thompson and Max Wall, who have recruited some powerful supporters, including Deep Ellum property owner Scott Rohrman, who has signed on to install growing towers on the rooftops of his buildings; and Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, who recently became an equity investor.

Thompson says their goal is to make food easy to grow and “cleaner,” without GMOs or pesticides. “One of the reasons we chose to grow with this technology is to eliminate the need for chemicals,” she says. “I was trying to stick to organic food, and started growing my own produce on my apartment balcony. I lost weight, and when I saw how much my health improved, I became inspired to do it on a larger scale.”